The Light in the Deep
by Alcoac
Summary: Rapture Noir. Exiled Inspector Teddy Nuckles wasted not a single good thought when he set eye on the lumbering brute clutching a bag of blood on Opening Day of Rapture. He shot him. In the bag, a beautiful woman's severed head. Chief Sullivan orders him to focus on the Fontaine case, but Tenenbaum's autopsy brings up many a puzzle, including a link to German experiments in Poland.
1. Chapter 1

"_The Lord reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light. He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them. He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason; he makes them wander in a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light."_ _– Job 12:22-2, Edom, 600 BC_

CHAPTER ONE

"You'll be dropping the bag or dropping your own self, but choose straight away," I shouted.

I'm not one for cities, but somehow I kept finding myself in one. Turns out there ain't much use for a gunhand outside of those urban nightmares. So, that's how I ended up in the deep, pointing my gun at this brutish fellow causing trouble outside the Grand Atrium. He didn't even have the courtesy to look back at me as he lumbered away with shuffling steps, clenching the burlap sack in his meaty right hand. I could see the sack was heavy with something, giving it a large lump. It dripped a foul, black syrup down to the deckplates, leaving a dark stain behind him. The brute.

"Last chance. The bag on the ground and hands on your head, or you'll cease to have one. Ryan doesn't allow warning shots down in here."

The man continued in his uneven steps. The only sounds were his incoherent mumblings, and the far off music of the anthem being played in the theater several compartments away. Any other day, I might have responded differently. I would have gone through my non-lethal takedown training, immobilization with my nightstick around his neck, maybe. Then again, the brute was so wide he didn't seem to have a neck in the normal spot most humans put theirs. He was all head and shoulders, thick as a brick. I needed at least two constables on hand for that, which I didn't have. Everybody was up at the big ceremony. I don't think any of them had seen me follow the brute out into the passageway. They probably all missed the trail, as well. That, or they didn't care enough to check it out.

I squared my shoulders and focused down the length of my steel revolver. Front sight focus. Two shots rang out, and struck the brute high in the center of his back. He tumbled to the floor like a roll of dimes falling apart and spilling over itself. He wasn't the only spill. As the bag fell loose from his stubby fingers, it opened, its contents rolling across the deck towards me. Sullivan's going to love this, I thought. The cold blue eyes of the woman's severed head stared blankly at me through a smear of blackened blood like one of the deep sea fish glaring at me from outside the portholes. The day was supposed to be dedicated to the official opening of Rapture, but even Andrew Ryan couldn't plan for everything.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I stared at my audio diary in dread. The thought of pressing the big, red button and recording yet another meaningless reel was enough to drive me mad. It had my formal name and rank emblazoned on it, 'Theobald Nuckles. Investigator. Ryan Security Forces.' We were instructed by Chief Sullivan, supposedly on Ryan's own order, to record our ideas, hypotheses, even musings on the cases we were working. Never had to put up with any bullshine like this back in Philadelphia. The thought was that someday in the future, people would look back and reflect on the pioneering lives of the earliest citizens of Rapture. The only reflecting they would get from mine was the yards of unused magnetic tape shining up at them as they listened to all the nothing I had recorded for them. That's not to say I had not ever used the audio diary. A few times, I had left it on all the way to the end of an hour-long tape, letting it record me scratching at my little notepad with my pencil, and picking up people having conversations in the security offices. No chance Sullivan would check the tapes, so nothing to worry about there. To be honest, I found the diary's whirring sound soothing.

I pressed the red button, and as the soothing whir started, I began writing up my notes on the case. At this point, every detail floated and flowed together in my head, but it needed to all be written down as quickly as possible to make sure I didn't forget anything later, or start to mix things together when I'm dealing with multiple cases at once. It happens, even in Rapture. Working a case is like sailing, you can steer, but only with the wind to push you along. There's no telling when then wind would blow or in what direction.

The first thing I wrote down was a simple timeline of events for the incident. I set the start of the incident as the moment I first saw the brute slinking around the outskirts of the crowd in the large theater. He appeared threatening, and being in my patrol area, I followed him out into the passageway. I set the time for the shooting as well. I knew I would come back to this timeline as more and more details were revealed. At this point, details were limited at best. The clothing the brute wore was the same non-descript tawdry rags most of the working boys wore in Rapture. Down on Neptune's Pier or out to Pauper's Drop, there wasn't a soul could be found wearing anything otherwise.

The head was a different story. Deep red hair with curls and blue-eyed, she wore light robin's egg eye shadow and pale pancake makeup on her cheeks, with ruby lipstick on her lips that had begun to turn purple and congealed from rigor mortis. To be honest, the lipstick seemed familiar. Almost like the girls in Siren Alley, but more spiffed out. Her beauty peeked through the mutilation done to her, she was a cut above any of the call girls walking the plates down there – a real Sheba. Her neck had been severed from her shoulders cleanly, in a single strong strike that gave me the mental image of one of the French guillotines from a hundred years ago. From the looks of it, she had been in her mid-twenties. A person that age is only just beginning life. Her life had been stolen from her. I didn't even know her name, but I had to know why this brute had killed her. It wasn't a promise or an oath, it just burned deep inside, knowing I had to know, had to understand, had to stop it from happening again. I owed it to her.

I didn't have all the details yet on the brute's body. I was waiting for the autopsy results to come back from our examiner. Stole a glance at my watch and saw it was an hour since the autopsy had begun. Perfect. Everyone wore wristwatches or kept pocket watches down in Rapture, since there was no way to tell time otherwise without help of the sun. I'd heard some of the earliest workers saying they had begun to be able to mark time by the weather of the deep – when a school of tuna would swim over the city, the groaning on the foundations and bulkheads from the daily tide changes, even the sound of the bathysphere when the thermal layer came lower during the daytime hours, there was a routine to Rapture, just like anywhere else, once you got used to it. I made my way over to the ladderwell down to the medical compartment.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

I've always thought of myself as someone who bad news finds easily. Bad news and bosses. Just as my boot hit the first rung of the ladder down, I heard a deep voice ring out. Chief Sullivan. "Running out when there's work needs doing, eh, Nux?"

The brute would have to wait. I climbed back into the office, but left the hatch open.

"What would you have me for, boss?"

"I know you're a man appreciates his place in life, Nux. Problem is, you just don't always seem to know where that place is sometimes." Sullivan let the smooth roll right off him.

"And what place would that be, then, boss?"

Sullivan walked over, looking down his pencil-thin mustache at me. "The word's come down, and it's come hard. The big man needs us to dog a possible contraband ring. Says he's got one of his feelings about that booger setting up shop down at the docks – Frank Fontaine. I'm putting together a rotation. Six hour shifts. Real official-like. I'm sure a Philly flatfoot such as yourself will be right at home in a detail like that."

"I'll get on it straight as I can, boss. Just have to finish up my thing with the brute and his unknown victim."

"The broad in the bag? Nux, I am not sure if I need my ears checked, but didn't you already catch the guy who bumped her? You put two slugs in him."

"That may be, boss, but I don't even know the girl's name yet. Plus, there's no way to say for sure just because he was carrying her head means he's the one who did her," I said.

Sullivan looked at me slant-eyed. "Nux, you're a good police, but fact is, I don't have that many good police. I don't have many police at all. We need to focus on the big picture. Prioritize. Its supply and demand, just like anything else. Ryan doesn't want Rapture turning into the kind of place we all swam down in the deep to get away from. We pinch the top offenders running around, the little ones will be pushovers."

"And does Ryan want murderers running around his little Shangri-la with no one stopping them in the meantime?" I was letting my anger show more than I wanted.

"Ryan tells us what Ryan wants. We don't tell him. He's big potato in the deep. Not me, and most certainly not you. I'm not going to say it again. Leave the dead for the dead. It's over. Ryan likes you for that business you pulled back in Philly, but I knew bringing you on was a risk, and I said as much. Ryan still wanted you. Now, if you want Ryan to keep you on the roll, your sole purpose for the immediate future is to report to the doghouse and get spun up on the Fontaine detail. Clear?"

I locked eyes with Chief Sullivan for a long moment. "It's clear, boss."

"See that? I knew you was the aces, Nux. Get you over there before the end of shift. They'll fill in the details. We bring home the goods on Fontaine, and Ryan'll be one in the hole for the force. Shouldn't take more than a few weeks. I'll have my eyes open for the daily summaries when they start churning out. Til then." Sullivan tipped his head, and walked out of the office.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Coming down the ladderwell from the security offices, I stepped into the medical examiner's compartment in the basement of our building. I was met by the bitter stench of rotting corpses and the light sound of someone singing a lullaby in German. Nodding at the security guard manning the front desk, I made my way back into operating theater three. "Guten abend, gute nacht, mit rosen bedacht, mit näglein besteckt, schlupf′ unter die deck," a thin, harsh voice crooned in Reich-speak.

"Don't you ever get tired of that song, Doc?" I said, coming into the spaces.

Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum was elbow-deep in the brute's chest cavity cutting out organs and didn't even glance back at me as she replied, "Not for me I sing, Inspector. Is for my babies help them sleep last final time. "

Tenenbaum had started working for the security force a few earlier as our chief medical examiner. She treated police when we were injured, helped victims of crimes, and conducted autopsies, and by all account had been a great addition to the force. Even still, none of us had gotten used to her otherworldly personality. I guess going through the Second World War in one of Jerry's prison camps will do that.

I brushed it aside. "What's the scene on this ape, Doc?"

"This no ape. I not sure is man, matter of the fact," she said.

"Meaning?" I asked.

"For last hour since I begin study this body corpse, I find many of irregularity. Size of organs too big," she said.

"He is a big boy," I pointed out.

"Organs too big." She was adamant. "Proportionality not consist with size of body. Brain. Heart. Lungs. Stomach. Nothing fits. Like is puzzle with pieces of another puzzle mixed in. Look here." She indicated the thick, black veins leading up from the heart to his right arm, also cut open.

I leaned over, though not so close as to cover my jacket with gore, and she continued, "Axillary artery and brachial artery too thick. Too dark. We move down closer. See there? Like small diamonds in the mine." Her voice grew soft barely above a whisper, "Only one time before I see something like this, but it not this refined. This pure."

"When was that?"

"Poland. The camps. Giftgas. Zyklon-B."


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Two hours later, I still couldn't get my mind off the question, and couldn't bring my stomach to get up an appetite. I was sitting in The Fighting McDonagh's Tavern, just a short bathysphere ride from the security offices in Rapture Central Command. I always did my best thinking outside the office and right now the English-style pub was perfect. I was staring at a plate of fried fish and chips but couldn't take a bite. This time of the afternoon most folks were still at work. Fortunately, Bill McDonagh that crazy Brit who owned the joint was attending to his duties as head engineer of Rapture at the moment. He rarely visited his pub during the day, so that's the exact time I would come. I owed him $500 from a bad night a few months back. Long story. Let's just say, cherchez la femme. Worst part is, when I did run into him from time to time making rounds with Ryan, he'd never bring it up with me. Crazy Brit.

The visit to Tenenbaum's had left me with more questions than answers, pardon the cliché. She wrote up cause of death on the brute as my gun shots had severed his spine and airways, but she told me in fact, had the big man not taken my lead, he would have likely died within hours if not minutes. All of the malformations and irregularities in his body, she had said. Didn't make no sense to me what some old Jerry gas had to do with a guy like that down in Rapture. Still, there's no such thing as a coincidence in police work.

Also, unfortunately, Tenenbaum had even less information to tell me about the victim, the woman. She had been able to give me time of death as about 24-48 hours prior to dropping out of the bag. Not entirely helpful. Worse, she had confirmed the woman had been alive during her beheading due to the effusion of blood around the wound and other details I hadn't bothered to remember. With Tenenbaum, if you could get the bottom line out of her, you didn't want to go back asking for more.

Interestingly, the doctor had been able to tell me the makeup was applied after the beheading. That was the kernel I was trying to pop. That might throw my call girl theory out the port hatch. I doubted the brute would have had the manual dexterity, let alone artistic talent to apply the makeup the way she was dolled up. Without names for the mismatched pair, I didn't really have much to go on. Just more questions. The beauty and the brute.

Back in Philadelphia, before everything that happened, we used to have a saying printed up on the wall of the detective's shop – Get off Your Butt and Talk to Joe. Joe being the man on the street who had the information you needed to put wind in your sails. Problem here was, even in Rapture, there were a lot of Joes, and I had no place to begin.

I decided to begin with my lunch. I started chewing on bits of the fish and smothered tartar sauce on everything. I couldn't imagine anyone lasting a week in Rapture who didn't have a taste for seafood. Just another of Ryan's surprises he somehow neglected to print in the brochure. The waitress came over and re-filled me with a third glass of cold water. I was thinking about how there was a lack of variety in the food in the deep, and it occurred to me there had to be an even smaller variety of cosmetics. Even with the booming free market allowed to unfetter its whatever-Ryan-called –it, there still just weren't enough materials to make for that many styles.

"Cherchez la femme," I muttered.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Siren Alley was the mason's quarter in Rapture, a high-class area where famed architects, such as Simon and Daniel Wales, show off their skills. The area was beautiful with lodgings that demonstrated the architects' artistic styles and shopping centers packed to the gills with upper-class residents, like over in Little Eden Plaza. In fact, Siren Alley was once considered one of the ritziest places in Rapture. Still, even though it had barely opened a few months before, some of the residents already started realizing that the richest citizens of Rapture also had the most expensive tastes.

I had spent the better part of the evening working the bars, restaurants, shops, and hotel lobbies of the Alley with a black and yellow photo of the beauty's head. Tenenbaum had helped me develop it on the quick, and we had cropped it off so it didn't look like the woman was currently body-less. The irony. I hated irony. I hated the lack of momentum, too. If there wasn't any wind blowing, I decided to make my own. I tried to fit in with my best ten-dollar suit, but I still stuck out like a Zulu in Chinatown.

A half hour later I was sitting the private offices of Daniel Wales at the Pearl Hotel. Wales stared at me across his flamboyantly ornate Louis XV desk that I had no idea could even be found in Rapture. It's always the little things. Wales owed me a favor, and I figured he would know something about the skin trade in the deep – at least enough to open the door.

He was in the middle of telling me a fine, upscale establishment such as his would never dream of catering to any type of clientele such as an escort service. I told him to quit the act before I launched him out a port hatch and called it another bathysphere accident. Such accidents were less than rare, a given in the first city at the bottom of the sea. Rapture wasn't built in a day, after all.

"Nux, look, I would love to help you. Emphatically, but I cannot be more clear. There is simply nothing I can do for you in this vein," Wales said as if I believed a word of it.

I gave him my standard stare. "Danny, I'm not asking. She is."

I placed the photo of the beauty on the desk. He picked it up and glanced over the photo quickly. "If she wants to ask she can ask me her…"

In mid-sentence, Wales' words caught in his throat like he'd swallowed a clamshell. His fingers trembled and nearly dropped the photo. He knew something. He knew her. He knew.

"Who is she, Danny?"

"She's my sister."


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dana Wales. The red-headed beauty had a name. 25 years on the earth and below the sea. Lived in one of the high-rises of the mason quarter. Occupation unknown. Sort of. Came from money, same as her younger brother. When Ryan invited him to come to Rapture, she followed along as immediate family. I never understood the need to be around someone just because you'd spent some time with them when you were young. Anyone who knew me from before was probably happier I was off the map. Literally. I didn't tell him about how her remains were found, or the beheading. I didn't have to tell him she was dead.

As I sat in the office, Wales told me he hadn't seen his sister in a few days. Normally, that wasn't much of an issue. She had her life, he had his. Still, she'd come around from time to time and they'd have a meal or catch one of Cohen's new shows. He wasn't sure exactly what she did for money. Dana never asked him for any, and always seemed to have more than enough herself.

From all that, I gathered she didn't have a set work schedule. That wasn't strange in Rapture, half the people in the deep were entrepreneurs of some sort. What was strange, though, was that the way she made a living was unknown even to her brother. Practically everything was legal in the sunken city, save the few cardinal sins Ryan kept off-limits, namely smuggling from the surface and anything connected to religion.

"There's one thing though," he finally said, his voice full of pain. I sat back in the chair as he continued, "she had a friend I saw her with sometimes. At Cohen's shows, mostly. Another woman. Older. Cat."

"She had a cat?" I asked.

"No, that was her name. Cat. Like, Catherine," he explained.

"Last name?" I said.

"Never knew it. Anytime they'd see each other out it was always some big to-do like they hadn't known they would see each other. You know the kind, I'm sure."

I didn't.

"Calling out each other's names loudly. Kisses on cheeks all around. Very European."

"She's European?" I asked, picking up on something.

"Certainly. I never knew exactly which country, but definitely from the East. I'll tell you another thing, she saw some of the war."

"She told you that?"

"I meet a lot of people running a hotel. You get to know how to see a person's story before the moment they open their mouth, and honestly, the war's an easy read. So many people in the deep have that look. Like they've seen the fires of Hell."

I nodded and turned to get up, "Haven't you heard, Danny?"

"Heard what?"

"Ryan runs this city on that fire."


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

I grabbed a quick bite to eat at the restaurant in the Pearl's lobby. Salmon steak and fried oysters. Paid up my check, and made my way to the Atlantic Express. As new and quick as the bathyspheres were, they were a pain to operate and even worse were the accidents. I only used them when I absolutely needed. Fortunately, the ride out to where I hoped to find this Cat was only a few stops on the Express. Unfortunately, I didn't make it all the way there.

The next stop after Siren's Alley, two plainclothes security officers hopped on board, grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, we were on a one-way trip to Neptune's Bounty. I recognized the two. Sullivan hadn't been kidding, there weren't many police, and definitely not many good police. This pair of mouth-breathers, Acey and Deucy, were perfect examples of that. I had no idea what their real names were. They were light on the police work and heavy on hand-delivering any special orders direct from the Chief, and of course, playing a whole lot of acey-deucy.

We landed on the upper wharf and made our way to a building overlooking the lower. I was still wearing my best ten-dollar suit, and I still stuck out like a Zulu in Chinatown, but for a completely different reason. The working-class folks in Neptune's wouldn't be caught in clothes like that even on the day they were flushed out a hatch to sea. Once we got upstairs, we found an empty office that wasn't so empty. It had been filled with telescopes, field glasses, photogramatry machines, and endless notes and charts. One other police deck-walker, John Abernathy, was on watch, from the look of things. I pulled myself over to the telescope for a look.

"Do we honestly think Fontaine is so dull-minded he'll drop his candy out in the open for everyone to see?" I asked.

Abernathy gave me a tired look, and leaned his chair back. "I don't think so at all, but don't tell me to think on the watch bill. Just saying I needs to keep watch, so I is."

The office was directly overlooking the main offices of Fontaine Fisheries and the docks where his submarines departed on their underwater fishing runs. As stakeout spots went, it couldn't be better, but experience had taught me surveillance wasn't everything.

I glanced back at Acey and Deucy, not remembering which was which. They gestured to the equipment, and the crewcut on the right said, "Officer Abernathy's about finished his watch for the day. You're next on the watchlist. Four hour shifts." Immediately after he shut his mouth, it seemed to disappear into the mass of his fleshy face.

"And here I forgot my prescription glasses," I said.

"If you require additional equipment, we will retrieve it for you from security force headquarters," the other high-and-tight yipped.

"No, no, this will be fine. You busters got me farmed up good here," I said. No doubt Sullivan had sent them to keep me in line. "I appreciate the pick-up and your dedication to the watchlist."

"We boldly turn our eyes to the price," he said. Great, now he's quoting the Rapture anthem at me. Next he'll start reciting Hayek chapter and verse.

"To crush the parasites despised," I replied with a smile. I wondered how hard it would be to kill them both right here and flush them off the wharf. Probably shouldn't. I didn't know if Abernathy would go for it, and there didn't seem to be any pressing reason to kill him. At least, for the time being.

I waved off the goon squad, and told Abernathy he was end of watch for the day. Hopefully, that would mean he went straight home instead of back to headquarters. The three left me alone, and I settled into the lonely reverie of reconnaissance.

An hour into wondering what had gone so wrong with my life, I noticed something out of place. That's not exactly right. I noticed some one out of place. Several someones. There were a group of three women heading into the main offices. They were dressed to the nines, straight out of the New Eden high fashion shops. It might have been a coincidence, but probably not, they were all redheads. Mid-twenties. Each of them could have been sisters with Dana Wales, which, as far as I knew, they were. And I thought I had stuck out. I felt such a shock pumping through me, I actually checked to make sure one of the electricity wires on the equipment wasn't touching a leaky pipe. It had happened before. Fontaine was involved.

I tried my best to follow the women through the building, but they weren't keeping near any of the windows and I couldn't see them. About ten minutes after seeing them enter, the lights in one of the top-floor offices went out. Another kind of leaky pipe, I suspected. Still, with nothing to see and nothing to do, I couldn't keep my eyes peeled for hours like they do in the movie serials. I knew the best thing to do would be watch for motion, but not wear out my peepers. I picked up Abernathy's log book. He had kept meticulous notes of comings and going since he had been on watch which was – I flipped to the start of his handwriting – almost twenty-four hours prior. Fat chance I was sticking around that long.

I went through line by line, and three days before, around the same time, there was a logged sighting that fit the bill. "Three women. Redheads. Likely hookers. Expensive." About ninety minutes later another log line. "Hookers depart." Never underestimate the literary prowess of the Ryan Security Force.

Checking my watch, I saw ninety minutes was almost up. I picked up the field glasses again, and trained them on the unlit top-floor offices with curtains drawn. It was still only late afternoon. Perfect time for Fontaine and his top executives to catch some action and still be home to the missus in time for dinner. Right on the money, the three redheads departed, looking a little worse for wear. I bounced out of the chair and took the stairs two-at-a-time.

The girls were in line at the Atlantic Express. Say what you will about mass transportation, it made some sense for cities, and it made a police's life so much easier. Standing behind them with a few people in between us waiting for the train, I could just about make out what they were saying. Remind me to never speak ill of a Chatty Kathy, either. They said they were headed to Fort Frolic.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Every society, even one at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, wants a place to unwind – a place where adults can take in a show, a day of shopping, or try their luck in a casino. In Rapture, one such place was Fort Frolic, featuring everything from the fine arts, such as music and theater, to the more salacious distractions, such as strip clubs and gambling. It was also a shopping destination, featured many boutiques selling goods from the most luxurious clothing to the finest tobacco and liquor, even some items with the black mark of being surface imports.

They called it a fort, but there wasn't anything military about it. It was a candy shop for adults. Another one of Ryan's little ironies. I hate ironies. Normally, the thing to do when a police is looking for a call girl would be to hit the strip clubs and casinos first. Something told me that wasn't where I would find her. Call it intuition – not that it had always served me well. I had agreed to come to the deep, after all.

Stepping off the Express, I made a beeline for the theaters. I couldn't take the same train as the girls for fear of being made, so I had taken the second one. Problem was, they had about ten minutes on me, and weren't conveniently waiting around for me to arrive. I had no idea if anyone had realized I'd ditched my post sitting around waiting for Fontaine to confess to a pair of goggles in a window. I was onto something here, and wasn't about to let go of it. If I played it right, it looked like Fontaine was good for it anyway, so Sullivan would get his for Ryan, too. I'd rather ask forgiveness than wait for permission. Still, not a single redhead in sight. When you can't find your prey, you have to draw it to you.

It was getting past dinnertime now, and the shows would start soon. There weren't many people around yet, which worked in favor of what I had planned. I walked up to the ticket booth of the Grand Atrium. The largest theater hall in Rapture had its sales window open all day, and a barker outside extolling the vaunted virtues of the night's performance, the dashing leading man Martin Finnegan, the captivating leading woman Anna Culpepper, and the mystifying genius of the musical composition by Sander Cohen. How anyone could stomach his rubbish was mystifying, alright. I'd never seen a stage show in my life, well, not the kind anyone would call fine art, that is.

Passing by a pane-glass window in a shop called Sophia Salon that sold designer clothes for prices I couldn't even look at, I ran my hand over my head to rumple my hair. I untucked my button-down shirt on one side over my slacks, and I placed my Irish flat cap on top. I ducked into the store and grabbed a unsupervised clipboard with some paper forms on it. Looked like an inventory of women's britches. It would work. Clipboards always work.

I sped up as I approached the youthful street barker and clicked my feet together when I made it to where he stood. Ryan didn't like us throwing our weight around as police, so most of the time it was up to me to improvise.

"What are you do-ing?" I asked, stretching out the last word in shock.

The young boy looked sunnily stunned for a moment before answering. "I'm calling the show tonight, sir. What else would I be doing?"

"And did you check with the stage manager, boy?" I asked.

"Stage manager? I'm here every night from two days before a show starts til closing night. They tell me the details and I do the calls, is all. I tell just what they want me to, and I, I never forget the names of the cast and crew, not once," he said, beginning to stammer.

"But don't you see, that's exactly the problem. Exactly," I said, almost screaming, my hand clasped tightly to the clipboard tucked under my arm.

"Sir, what is?"

"Tonight our normal leading lady, Ms. Culpepper has taken to ailing. She will not be able to perform, and her understudy – you do understand what an understudy is, boy? Good – will be performing in her place. You see the issue, now?" I asked, as if explaining to a toddler.

"Oh straight away, straight away, sir," he said, eager to keep his job. "Just you say, sir, what is the, uh, the understudy's name?"

I pulled out the clipboard and glanced down at it. "Dana Wales."


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

The theater-going blue-noses and high hats were all hustle with a little bustle to boot tonight in their spiffy half-tone shoes and glittering dresses. My line with the barker had gone over swell, no one had even thought to come correct him yet. Must not be that big of a tomato to have Ms. Culpepper removed from the top of the showbill. Still, even after the doors had shut, and the barker long gone, there was no sign of the redheads.

I was sitting in a restaurant across the street that had already closed down, and was trying to act like sipping the remnants of cold coffee I had ordered an hour ago wasn't suspicious.

"Nux, you aren't going to the show?" as voice said directly into my ear.

I twisted around to see a woman standing before me like she had the keys to the city and had just opened every door. She wore a beret, but from under it, a few strands of red were poking out. Maybe late thirties. "I'm not much one for shows," I said.

"Neither was Dana Wales," the woman responded, gesturing to the theater where I had changed the playbill.

"She a friend of yours?" I asked.

"Yes, and you already know that, Nux. Why waste a question when you already own the answer?" She said, her head tilting to the side.

"You're Cat." I wasn't asking.

She smiled, slightly pulling up her lips at the edges. "Catherine Periwell. Please to finally meet you. Not a bother if I call you Nux, right? I hear that's what you go by."

"Whatever you like, Ms. Periwell." I made like I was about to stand up, but she sat down across from me before I got there.

"Let's get one thing straight, Nux," She started. "I'm not here for your sunny disposition. I'm here to find out what happened to Dana. That's all I'm going to talk to you about, then I'm making tracks. You aren't putting me on the record, and you aren't bringing me downtown."

"When you're in Rapture you're already as far down as you can go."

"That's where you're wrong." She was quick. "We're in the deep, but there is a darkness that goes deeper than anything you've ever seen, Nux."

"Ms. Periwell, I want the same thing. What was done to Ms. Wales…" I trailed off for a beat, then found my words again. "I can't let that happen to anyone else, and I can't let the person, or people who did it get away like nothing happened. I don't care if its Frank Fontaine, I don't care if it's Andrew Ryan himself."

Cat didn't respond right away. She just leaned forward and looked at me, looked right through me with those green eyes of hers. "Perhaps," she finally said. "I see truth in your eyes, Inspector Nuckles. Perhaps you can help Dana. Perhaps you can help us all."

"Help us all? There's more?"

"In the deep, if you go down far enough, only then can you see the light. It is not the same as the warm light up above, from the sun. No, the deep light is a cold light, a fragile light, but a powerful light all the same. It has the power to give life, the power to take it away."

"And you're saying this deep light, it had something to do with what happened to Dana?" I asked, not a clue where Cat was going.

"Not something, Inspector Nuckles. Everything."


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

That night, I sat up in my apartment with my thoughts and a glass of processed seawater going through medical records from around Rapture to see if any other abnormalities had come up like with the brute and his Zyklon-B reaction. Hadn't found a thing. Worse, I couldn't stop thinking about Cat. She had ended our conversation abruptly, telling me she had to go, but that we'd talk more later. Not that we had talked all that much in the first place. Everything she said seemed to make sense, but no sense at all. Deep light. Dana. Fontaine. Help us all. I felt like I was still missing some big pieces toward seeing how this all fit together, and how it led to a girl like Dana getting rubbed out in a way like that.

What Fontaine had done to her was worse than an execution, it was humiliating, he robbed her of her dignity. Regardless of how she chose to make her living, no one deserved that. That was supposed to be the dream of Rapture, I thought. The whole reason Ryan coaxed us down here. Freedom from oppression, freedom from imposed morality. Freedom from the idiocy of bureaucracy and legal codes that had twisted and snaked their way through thousands of years of kings and lords and politicians and presidents to make their way into what they were today back on the surface.

I remembered firsthand what it meant to be on the side of the law, and it didn't always mean on the side of the just. If I'd learned anything in '44, it had been that. There wasn't any room left on land for the people, let alone an individual, not with Uncle Sam calling the shots and bringing in the army whenever he didn't get his way. Not like he cared who got stepped on in the process, not with his war effort a hundred thousand miles away to keep him busy. I didn't know that meant the people at home didn't matter. The people of Philadelphia he forced to build those flying fortresses and devastating destroyers. He wanted us all to think we were saving the free world, for truth, justice, and the American way. I knew better. Back in those street and factories, I saw was it was really all about. When they asked for my badge, they'd said I had done the right thing, but in the wrong way. I had no regrets about what I did. I'd do it again.

Maybe that's what had brought me to the deep. Maybe that's why I had to make right what happened to Dana. I didn't know, and this seawater wasn't bringing me any clarity. I got up to pour it out and make myself a seaweed tea with milk. It tastes a whole lot better than it sounds, trust me. I began to make myself the cuppa, when I heard a tap on my hatch. I went over to check through the peephole. I'd be surprised if Acey and Deucy had figured out this fast that I'd skipped out on watch. It wasn't them at all.

It was Cat.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning, I was standing in the lobby of Fontaine Fisheries wearing a pinstripe suit and derby hat I had, let's say borrowed, from one of the unattended lockers in the security offices. I pulled down at the sides to make sure it was on right and checked the belt buckle and brim of the hat. Everything seemed in place. I was miserable without my flat cap. The get-up had me feeling like I'd slipped into somebody else's skin and all I wanted to do was itch all over. The secretary looked up at me from her desk.

"Morning, toots," I started, charming up my best smile, and hoping it didn't look too plastered on a mug like mine. "I'm here for the big 10-oh meeting with the man on the top floor."

"Good morning, sir. Let me just check the day's agenda." The lobby secretary looked like she was only a few chromosomes away from being one of the deckhands herself. Polite and all, but she had dark hairs running down her thick arms and over her knuckles. Cropped black hair. Fingers like sausages. Definitely an Ital. "You said 10? 10 o'clock?"

"I did," I said, confident of my meeting time.

"He ain't got no 10 o'clock, sir. Nothing on my agenda here, and this gets updated the end of every day direct from his personal secretary. I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you." She was a trained gatekeeper.

Fortunately, I knew something about getting around gatekeepers. "Listen, I didn't want to say anything, but here's the skinny. See, I'm not on the meeting schedule because I don't have a meeting with Mr. Fontaine. What I do have for Mr. Fontaine is information. I can't get into all the proclivities because of certain, uh, sensitivities. Suffice it to say, the heat is being turned up on Mr. Fontaine's organization. Heat that he can ill-afford at a time such as the present, you understand."

She looked at me like she was trying to decide whether to buy my claptrap or coldcock me, and it looked like she was leaning toward the fisticuffs. She leaned forward across the desktop, "And just how would you be knowing something like that, sir?" She said the last word like it tasted like metal in her mouth.

"Simple," I shrugged. "I'm on the security force. Check it out if you don't believe me. Name's Ace McPhearson. I usually work with a partner, but times being what they are, you understand. I'm hoping to, uh, parlay with the good Mr. Fontaine."

That sent her back. She'd certainly heard of Acey Deucy, like all the dockhands had. She picked up the phone, nearly crushing it in her beefy hands, rang out, and spoke softly in to the receiver. Then she motioned to the stairs.

I blew past the next secretary, who I noticed was a young girl with red hair. Must be Fontaine's type. The sick pervert. Replaced her already like a piece of furniture. I opened the door, and was standing on one side of what had to be the single largest desk under the sea. It looked like it was hundreds of years old, with intricately crafted designs and emblems carved delicately into the hard wood.

"Few years back one of my subs came across a shipwreak on one of their fishing runs. Spanish galleon. 16th century. Wouldn't ya know it'd already been picked dry as a freakin' bone? All except this here fancy table, 'course." Fontaine smiled at me, keeping the end of a cigar chomped firmly between his teeth. "Now, what can I do y'fer, Mr. McFeeny?"

I didn't bother correcting. "If you don't know already, I'm already wasting my time," and I turned to walk out.

"Nah, nah, stop that, will ya? C'mere. They called up and tole' me. That's just an expression, is all." He spread his arms with all the warmth of a favorite uncle.

I stopped and about-faced. "Look, I'm already way out on this. They even catch a word I'm even in the building, I'm the next one out an airlock."

"Funny thing, risk is," Fontaine said with a laugh. "Nobody can take it. Just so happens that some a' us get taken by it."

"I'm here, Mr. Fontaine, to make a trade. I will exchange information for you a secret surveillance detail that's dogging you 24/7. I will tell you the areas they are focusing on, the times they are keeping watch, what they are looking for, and all the best ways for you to slip right past all of it. I won't tell you the names of the officers involved, because the minute I do, I'm shark food and we both know it." Dana better appreciate this. After I had thrown Cat out last night, this was the only play I had left. I was sick of the lies.

"Ryan'll do anything to put me away. He's been coming at me like a dog in heat for months. Don't think you're the first officer to stand on that side of this desk," Fontain said, stroking his mustache. He took a puff on his cigar and lightly tapped the ash off the red ember. "But you make a fair offer. And just what, in precise exactness, is it, that I'm trading for this sunken treasure you're offering?" I could hear it. He was hooked. He wanted to know. Just like everyone wants to know, and I was going to tell him. I was going to make him see what he did to Dana. What happened to the poor innocents that his machine rolled over like clay dolls. He asked again, "Well, what do you want?"

"Justice," I said, at that moment pulling out the picture of Dana and slamming it hard on the table in front of him.


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Is this some sort a chain-yankin', then?" Fontaine looked at the picture perplexed. I wasn't about to let him play the fool.

"You know just what this is about. This is about what you did to Dana Wales," I said.

Fontaine, however, looked less than awe-struck with horror. "What did I do to Dana Wales?"

"You used her up and spit her back like a bone from one of your fish cakes. She was only 25, Fontaine. Did you even think about that? Her family? Her future?" I felt the fire at my neck now. He wasn't talking his way out of this.

"Certainly. I think about it all the time. In fact it's a frequent topic of discussion between we two."

"You sick freak."

"I don't know what sort of idea you have here. You know what, I don't like your tone at all." Fontaine called into the next room, "Dana? Would you come in here a minute?"

"What the…"

Dana Wales walked into his office.

"Yes, boss?" she said. I nearly felt my heart stop as I realized she was the secretary I had brushed past only minutes before in the hallway. I fought for breath but found none. Somehow, someway, she was standing right there in front of me, not a scratch on her, not a line in her perfect features.

"Dana, please see this Mr. Mac-Feeny to the door. In fact, call up Tony and Sam and have them make sure he doesn't get lost on the way out." Dana exited as Fontaine gestured to me with a cigar hand, "Thanks for the tip, though, hoss. Can't never be too careful, my line of business and all."

A pair of gorillas in matching striped suits materialized in the doorway, and ushered me out before I could say a word. They frog-marched me past the desk where I saw Dana sitting, filing an office memo like this was any other day to her. The world didn't make sense anymore. A city in the deep made more sense that the last 48 hours, and I wasn't about to leave without figuring something out.

I pulled back from the gorillas, and stepped quickly between them towards Dana's desk. They grabbed me from behind and pulled me toward the stair case.

"Dana!" I called, slowly losing the fight to the goons' hairy hands shoving me out of the place. "How's your brother?"

She looked back at me, for a muggy moment her eyes flashed recognition, but then turned to cold anger. She reached under the desk and pulled out a shotgun. She leveled it at me and cocked it. Double-barreled. The last thing I heard was, "Sir, I'm sorry. I don't have a brother."


	14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Second night of surveillance detail. The red-neon sign of Fontaine's Fisheries blazed dimly over the dim wharf, providing only a scant addition to the light, which was always in poor supply in the deep. Sure enough, Chief Sullivan had my rear end when I got back. The good news was, Fontaine hadn't tipped off to anyone he knew the jig was up, or even about my ill-conceived meeting with him. The bad news was they did realize I'd skipped out on a full day of watch. My memory of being dragged into Sullivan's office was more of a jumble than a straight thought. I remembered the word 'dereliction' quite clearly. All it meant was extra hours for me. Like he'd said before, not enough police to go around.

None of that mattered. What mattered was how wrong I'd been. I thought I'd had it all sorted out. The makeup, Siren Alley, the brother, the money, Fontaine, the other redheads. What only hours before had lined up so neat and nice in my mind was now scattered and cloudy like trying to stare off into the inky black nothing surrounding Rapture. The only spots with any natural light in the deep were the heat vents in Hephaestus or the glowing algae out by Persephone.

The more I thought about it, the holes that had appeared in my logic before grew larger. I had taken the makeup to mean she was a working girl. I had taken the Pearl's owner at his word that it was his sister, even the name came from him, though Fontaine had seemed to confirm that at least, there was one redhead in the deep named Dana Wales. Only that one was a personal secretary, not headless in a burlap bag. What really threw me was the trio of girls I had spotted on surveillance and in the logs. Now that I knew the layout of Fontaine's offices, I realized his office faced out to the harbor, not back towards the other buildings. The room they had entered wasn't his office. Whatever they were doing inside, there was a chance Fontaine didn't know about it, either. Which made sense, seeing as I was still breathing.

And then there was Cat Periwell. I hadn't caught sight of her anywhere in Rapture since that night, and I'd spent every one of my off-duty hours the past two days asking around for her. Not a trace. Neither still of Daniel Wales back at the Pearl. I began thinking over what Cat had said to me in a completely different light. Was she getting at that all along, I wondered. If Fontaine didn't know what was going on, wasn't behind what happened to the beauty, there may be more she knew about. When she'd come over she just kept babbling about the light and the dark, when all I wanted was more information on Fontaine. Figures just when I actually want to talk to her, there's neither hide nor hair of the woman. Cherchez le femme, alright.

The chill from the window seeped in, pressing down through my coat like a silent mugger. There was always a perpetual feeling of cold in the deep, especially here by the wharf. I heard the door open behind me, and looking into the reflection, I spoke without turning back, "About time you showed up. I was starting to think you'd given up on me."

"Seems the last time we spoke, it was you giving up on me, was it not," said Cat.

I spun around to face her, not leaving me chair. "You aren't really Cat, are you?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes, actually. Cat is part of my real name, though a nickname. Something my father always called me growing up near Sevastopol."

"A Red," I said, staring directly at her.

"I'm just as Russian as the city's dear leader, Mr. Ryan or was it Mr. Rianovski?" She gave me an upturned side of her mouth.

"Explain." I was in no mood for upturned mouths.

"Inspector Nuckles, if you must know my real name is Katrazyna Privekova. I use the Anglicized name of Catherine Periwell as a cover here in Rapture."

"But its not the first name you used when you got here, is it." I said, not asked.

"Correct. You know that name already," she replied.

"You're Dana Wales. The first Dana Wales, at least." I had begun to put it together not long after getting the bum's rush out of Fontaine's offices. His secretary, the other red heads, the beauty, and now Cat, somehow had all had that in common.

"There is always a Dana Wales, and she is always in the employ of Mr. Fontaine. As far as he knows, there has only ever been one Dana Wales, and she, I, have been his personal assistant for several years now. Since he first arrived in Rapture," Cat explained.

"How is that even possible? We talking plastic surgery here? That don't account for the age difference, though, unless it's some new kinda surgery I never heard of before." This was adding up, just not in a way that made any sense to me.

"Actually, that's more right than you realize, Inspector," said Cat. "I, and others like me, were sent here by the motherland. Our operation was simple. We were to discover the truth of Ryan's so-called Atlantic Project, and report back to the office."

"KGB."

"Yes. Despite his efforts to the contrary, there was no way Ryan could undertake a project of such scope without it rising to our attention. Naturally, Moscow was extremely interested in the prospect of a hidden city halfway across the sea, located just between America and Great Britain. They realized rather than attempt to stop Ryan, they had much to gain from helping him."

"What would the Russkies want with this city?"

"Impunity, Inspector." Her eyes grew coldly serious. "With this as a base of operations, the motherland would be able to keep an eye on the new powers in Washington and London. Some in the halls of power have taken a stand against our leaders, despite our shared sacrifices together to defeat the fascists."

"Wouldn't have gone that way if America hadn't pulled the Allies out," I didn't know where this was going.

"You Americans and your bombs. Yes, you used your weapons of destruction to level cities in Japan with a push of a button. We Russians, though, we paid the price to free all Europe. More of our men, women, and children died fighting Hitler than all the soldiers sent from America. But, that is another discussion."

"I take it you're not here to teach me a history lecture," I was getting anxious.

She looked anxious, too. "I have been trying to tell you, Inspector. This is not about girls and fish and some smuggled cigars from above the waves. This is about the fight for Rapture itself." Her eyes pierced. "Russia would take this hidden city from Ryan's hands and transform it into a military and intelligence outpost."

"Why are you telling me all this, and where do the girls come in?"

"I was part of something. Something that started with the scientists who traveled to Poland, to the German camps there. They saw the experiments, and wanted to continue the work. They first went to Moscow. They made improvements, developments. Then, they were approved to come along on the Rapture mission. The critical component. Avrova."

"Avrova?"

"Project Avrova. They needed a way to take the city from Ryan while keeping the city intact. They authorized the scientists to come to the deep. They brought their work with them."

"How could you have done all this without Ryan noticing?" I asked.

"You are here, watching, aren't you? We gave him something else to look at."

"Fontaine," I said instantly.

"Yes. We made sure his submarine runs to the surface went smoothly, and used our agents to pay more than handsomely for his goods when they arrived in the city. That was my role as his assistant, to keep the books on the runs, to make sure everything was running smoothly. As well as my secondary duty." Her face took a grim look.

"Which was?"

"Project Avrova, it's not a poison or a gas like with the Jew. They wanted the city to still be inhabitable. It does not kill outright through the air. It must be inserted into the blood. A bite, a needle, and the change is instantaneous. They needed, test subjects."

"Fontaine's missing workers. The accidents." It was beginning to make sense.

"It was too much for any person." Cat looked away from me, out at the window to the workers down on the wharf beyond. "After a year of seeing what, what they were doing to people here, I couldn't take it. Rapture is, an amazing place. It is a light. A light for the world in the deep of the ocean. It is a fresh start for humankind. A new way. The man, Ryan, he is flawed, as all men are, but his ideal, a civilization without the corruption, the old powers, the old way. The world needs this place."

"And you need this place." I stood up and walked over to her by the window.

"I left," she whispered, her hand rising to trace the lines in her face. "But not before they, they had already injected me with Avrova. I began to age. Far faster than I should have. I needed to report in every week for another dosage to maintain my youth, or…"

"Or you'd become what you are now," I finished. The animals.

"After I left, they found new agents. Gave them Avrova. Made them to look as I did, so Fontaine wouldn't know. The procedure, it was imperfect. It lasted only weeks at a time, so they needed substitutes. There's always a Dana Wales, and there's never been a Dana Wales."

"And there's still a way to save Dana Wales," I said, taking her hand in mine. "Take me to them. I have an idea."

Her eyes met mine, "ideas are the only things that are truly ever ours."


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There's a lot you can tell about a city from the outside looking in, and most of its wrong. The defiant skyline that cuts across the sky, the pulsing neon lights proclaiming the names of great men and tales of the great deeds found within. There's no sign of the bitterness of the city's true nature. From the outside, there's no conflict, no adversity, the pain of living not even the smallest strike against the steel and concrete might of the city. And what a city it was.

I was strapped to the outer hull of a bathysphere, hurtling deeper into the ocean, looking up at Rapture from below. Turns out even at the bottom of the sea, there's still lower to go. My clunky dive suit didn't gave me enough mobility to turn my head, but I could careen my neck back and forth inside the steel helmet, so my only options were to look up at Rapture, and down into the trench. I was attached just behind the drive shaft of the vehicle, so I would be invisible to any watchers from below or directly ahead, hidden by the bubbles and backwash of the propeller screws. If another bathysphere came behind us, I'd be easy prey, but Cat and I had worked out the schedule and decided it wasn't likely.

Though it had been built over the heat vents, the trenches under Rapture should have been dark, the magma thousands of feet below the surface, only its warmth rising above where it was harnessed by the massive machinery of Hephaestus to power the city. The trench, instead, was so bright, the only way to keep from blinding was to constantly pull my eyes upward. The light blazed up from the deepest depths of the cut in the Earth, and streamed out in all directions, mocking the darkness piled above in thousands of fathoms of seawater.

Even stranger, the light really did seem to be moving. Pulsing. Writhing.

I heard three knocks from inside the bathysphere. We were getting close. I couldn't hear, but Cat would be hailing our destination on their encrypted frequency. We were about a hundred feet beneath Rapture's penal colony, Persephone, a secret to most citizens of the city. I had been there more than my share of times to drop off malcontents – murderers, rapists, thieves. It was amusing to think that just below there, hiding in the light, was a far worse sort of prison.

As Cat slowed the bathysphere, I caught my first glimpses of the deep-sea outpost. The Russians had built it small, even by Russian standards. Blinking as my eyes adjusted to the blinding light, I realized it was actually an attack submarine. About 300 feet long, with the insignia K-3 on the hull, it was ugly and ferocious at the same time. It looked like someone had taken a warship, stripped it of almost all the masts and rigging, and replaced them with guns, mines, and nearly the entire hull with torpedo tubes. Fishing holes, I remembered some old sailor called them. The thing looked like it had enough firepower to wipe out all of Rapture, and was positioned facing the foundations of city. Not hard to guess what they planned if their project failed. Leave it to the Russkies to come to a party with drinks for everyone and enough firepower to wipe out the East Coast. Perfect.

My plan was simple enough. Cat would turn herself into her handlers. Say she was willing to come back if they resumed the Avrova treatments and made her whole again. Reverse the rapid aging process, she would demand. They might listen, they might not, but they weren't going to just shoot her on the spot. She was going to tell them she had information about Ryan's security forces catching wind of Avrova and the KGB infiltration. I even recorded a few audiologs to that effect to give her story some credibility. It wasn't much, but it was better than a clipboard. For myself, I didn't have much of a better idea.

As the bathysphere docked with the submarine, I heard the shrieking hiss of compressed air matching up, the mating end of the airlock reaching out to find its partner. I couldn't see much through the viewplate, but inside the portholes, I could see Cat's female figure and a blob of red that must be her hair. She met with some green and white blobs that were taller than her, and walked away, deeper into the mass of Soviet iron.

I decoupled the straps from the dive suit and pushed off from the vehicle towards the sub's hull. My counterweights were just enough to give me a little buoyancy at that depth, which was great since I'd only had deep sea dive training twice since joining the security force. Have to thank Sullivan for that. I made my way down along the hull, grasping any protrusion or cut in its surface to pull myself along. Cat had told me she'd seen divers exiting through the base of the hull through something called a moon pool – an hole cut directly into the keel of the sub with a chamber maintaining pressure, allowing easy access out for divers, and hopefully, easy access in for me.

Groping down and forward, I finally saw the spot where the water seemed to come up and into the sub. I pulled myself over, and began dropping counterweights. The pressure pushed my helmet right up above the surface of the pool, and I was looking around the dive chamber. Labels all in dark Cyrillic lettering and the room littered with spearguns that had been modified to fire what looked like some sort of needle. I dropped more counterweight, and brought my chest out the water. Working my arms up, I was able to get off my helmet and begin undoing the suit.

With a quick pop, I pulled myself up and out of the dive suit, letting it fall to the depths below. Though I had barely exposed myself to any of the impossibly cold water, the room itself was colder than the Delaware Valley ice storms I'd grown up with in Philadelphia. I saw a puffy overcoat with fur lining hanging up and put it on over my shirt and trousers. I checked to make sure my revolver was still working. I walked up to the watertight door and pulled the level to unlock the dogs slowly, quietly, and stepped through into the passageway.

The world went black as I was knocked out cold.


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I couldn't move. I could be alive, or not. I could be dead, or not. Seeing as I'd never been dead before, I wouldn't have anything to compare it with. As it turns out, I wasn't dead yet that time, either. I blinked my eyes but couldn't focus them. I was staring up at a strange curved wall that turned into a ceiling. I was on an angle. Arms, legs, neck, couldn't move at all. I pulled and realized I barely had any strength, either.

"About time for you to wake, Mister Nuckles," the man's deep voice seemed oddly familiar. I couldn't even focus my hearing to tell where he was, but I knew he was close. "Imagine my surprise and delight at finding you here in our little, private estate. Not quite the luxury of Olympus Arms, but I tell you, the privacy is next to none in the deep."

"This is what the Russkies call luxury?" I said, still not sure where he was.

"Luxury is something unnecessary in Soviet Russia. A true Bolshevik has no need of the lavish waste you Americans seem to require. Even Rianovsky, the traitor, has been infected by such wasteful, capitalist ways." He seemed to be working on something. Something that moved.

"Abernathy, are you going to get to the point or are you going to bust my chops all night?" I said.

John Abernathy's face suddenly loomed over mine, a touch of something akin to fever in his eyes. "Nux, you never were one for the working man, were you? Always doing the bidding of the overlords, yet never working for yourself. Surely you must realize you can live for yourself, we all can, just not in the guise of this whorish city of salt and flesh."

"You don't know the first thing about me, Abernathy."

"Oh, but I do. I do. I know why you're in Rapture. Why you had to leave Philadelphia, I heard through the office. Did you think you had covered your tracks so expertly?" He sounded like he really did know.

"They had it coming." I said.

"Yes, I suppose from your point of view they did, didn't they? I still remember the final situation report from Philadelphia. Once you found out the strike leaders were agents of the motherland, you went into their homes, all on the same night, and left lead bullets in center of their heads."

"Not exactly." I closed my eyes. "I didn't know they were Russkies until after the fact."

"Delightful," Abernathy crowed. "No wonder Rianovsky sought you out as he did. The man who single-handedly ended the great strike of Philadelphia."

"Yeah, I was a real national hero. Untie me and I'll give you an autograph."

"In time, Nux, in time. First, however, I was going to tell you a secret. You like secrets, don't you?" He was beaming. He walked over to the table across the room to the cage where he'd been working moments ago. Inside, the thing, whatever it was, began to whip back and forth in madness.

"What is that thing?" I asked.

"This, Nux, is Avrova. It's latest vehicle, of course. We knew we couldn't simply go around jabbing the good people of Rapture with needles, so we found another way. After gestating in our light mass below, these little beauties become the perfect carriers for the serum." He held the cage forward. The foot-long creature smashing itself on the thin bars, trying to break free, right towards me.

"Sea slugs," I said. "You're grand scheme is to infect sea slugs?"

"You must have more vision, Nux. Like the matryoshka doll, one plan inside another, inside another." Abernathy was on his pedestal. "We began with the light mass, the Avrova below. Then the sea slugs, as you call them. We have already begun infecting Fontaine's workers. We just needed to raise the awareness. So, we took a pair of our subjects, and released them in a place that seemed most opportune for the authorities of Rapture to take notice."

"Rapture Day. The brute. The beauty," I whispered.

"Yes, Nux. No doubt your wonderful Dr. Tenenbaum has already made the connection between those bodies to some of her, shall we say, earlier work. It's surprising, you know we had no idea she would be down here when we arrived. The gifts of fate. An early pioneer of the research, waiting for us already," he smiled. "I have no doubt she will soon 'discover' the sea slugs and take our project to the next step for us."

"I don't think so."

"You still fail to understand, don't you, Nux? When they learn the effects of the Avrova, whatever they end up calling it, they'll be hooked. Eventually, they all lose their minds, I'm sorry to say. We won't have to do any of the work. They'll do it all for us." Abernathy was fruit salad, but he was right. "And now, Nux, you will join the great project."

He opened the cage, and the sea slug leapt onto my face.


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Not dead again. Still couldn't move. Something was moving. Some part of me. No, not a part of me. Inside me. Inside my arms and legs. Inside my chest. Inside my stomach. Inside my lungs. Inside my head. I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. My blood vessels themselves turned against me. I writhed on the upright operating table, jerking and spitting, and suddenly, all at once, I stopped completely.

Abernathy stepped over, "Nux? What has happened? Can you hear me? This is not correct."

"Yes it is," I said, as I pulled my arm free of the restraint and wrapped my fingers around his throat like a vice.

Abernathy tried to scream, but the only sound that came out was a gurgle.

"Cat and I figured you'd inject me if I was caught. That's why she got me ready. She gave me the primer serum already. I'm not really sure how it all works, one serum activating the other and all. Then again, not sure if I need to know all the science, do I?" I freed the rest of the straps and slammed Abernathy against the bulkhead. "Where is she?"

"Two decks up. The interrogation room," he croaked. "They didn't…didn't believe her."

"I believe her," I said, pushing my grip closed and crushing his windpipe. Abernathy, whatever his real name was, slid to the deckplates. For some reason, a thought popped up that now I'd have to cover his surveillance shifts, too. Some people just aren't good team players.

I made my way up the two ladderwells without seeing anyone. Seemed the Russkies kept only a small crew on the sub, most of the agents running around the city, keeping tabs on everything and everyone. The serums meshing in my veins made my head pound. I felt like I was stronger than ever, and I was, but I felt like I might explode at any moment.

I pulled up to a hatch that looked promising, and twisted the level too quickly, tearing off three dog-clips from the frame. Wrong. Not Cat. Inside were a dozen red-headed girls, standing together, hunched over, actually, holding sea slugs onto each other's faces. One pulled a slug off and began to vomit, then looked over at me.

"Whoops, not the men's," I said, as I slammed the hatch and skirted away.

The next hatch, I was more careful. I had to remind myself of little things like that, and breathing, and standing upright. The serum threw off my body's internal mechanisms. I put my ear to the door and listened inside. I heard a man's voice, and a woman's. He was screaming in Russian. She was screaming right back. It was Cat. I yanked the lever, and charged into the room like bull at one of those clowns.

The KGB officer took my shoulder in the chest as he turned to look, and I didn't stop until I'd put him halfway through the bulkhead.

"It's time to go," I told Cat. Our eyes met. She knew what had happened to me. I could also see, instantly, they hadn't fixed her aging. It was getting worse. She already looked five years older than when I'd last seen her, only hours ago.

"Not just yet," Cat said. She took my hand and headed to the ladderwell.

We rose two more decks, and came to the control room. There were only two Russkies on duty. Within minutes, there were none. Cat moved over to the steering column and drive mechanism.

"This must end," she said with a voice of steel.

Cat dialed in the bearings for the sub, and activated the motor. The giant screw screamed and we all lurched forward as the underwater warship groaned out of its nest on the side of the trench. Cat slammed forward the column, dropping us twenty-five degrees down bubble and drove directly for the heart of the light mass.

I grabbed her hand, "We have to go."

She made a motion like she wanted to stay, but I wasn't hearing it. I pulled her forward, and with only a touch of my newfound strength, she was unable to decline. We made our way thought the deck and ladders to the airlock with the bathysphere. Anything that hadn't been bolted down was raining down on us from above as the sub pitched forward even more, at one point we fell as the sub clanged against the side of the trench wall.

We arrived to the bathysphere, and I worked the screw motor as Cat disengaged the airlock. The light was so blinding, I couldn't make out the dials and buttons on the controls I was using. Muscle memory kicked in, and I heard the motor being to whir to life, nearly deafened by the cacophony of metal and rock from the Soviet sub outside.

Cat came back over to me, "we're free," she reported. In more ways than one, I hoped.

I angled the bathysphere up and opened the throttle to full speed. With the engine not yet at full power, it might not be enough for us to get out before the submarine, loaded with torpedoes, gave us another kind of freedom.

At some security briefing I'd only half paid attention to, I remembered hearing something about how shock waves underwater are totally different than on land. I probably should have taken notes. The explosion stole all of our senses. Sight and hearing were gone. Touch, smell, even taste were taken, too. The only sensation at first was pure nothingness.

For a moment.

The next instant, our bodies were flung against the thick glass of the bathysphere, and bounced back against the other side like a kernel of corn in a popper. I knew, thinking, at least three of my ribs felt like they'd disintegrated. The vehicle rocked forward and back in the water, the engine fighting for control as we went end-over-end more times than I could count. The trajectory was upward, though, and we shot out of the trench at speeds never before seen by a rating on a little bathysphere.

Straight into the bottom of Rapture.


	18. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Two weeks later, I was sitting at the café again, across from the Great Atrium. I had been here every night since Tenenbaum let me out of the medical center. I didn't know why I was waiting there, I could be going all over Rapture, but somehow I thought this was the place to be.

Sullivan, to my great surprise, was the first face I'd seen waking up in the white bed. He wasn't about to listen to a word I had to say about secret projects and Soviet infiltrators, so all I'd told him was I solved the Dana Wales case. He told me I owed Ryan a bathysphere, and about a month of surveillance duty. I laughed and told him that sounded great. He looked so confused when he walked out.

As far as I could tell, the serum they'd injected me with was still inside, but not as much as the others. Tenenbaum said she'd seen faint traces of a few minor variances in my vitals and blood levels, but nothing she didn't wave away as a result of the crash. I'd only had one dose from the slug, maybe that wasn't enough to keep it in me for long.

I finished my meal and tipped the waiter generously I stood up to leave and head over to the wharf for my night shift. At least Acey and Deucy were on the roster now. Suddenly, I whipped my head back as I heard something.

"…and filling in for the role of the leading lady, Ms. Dana Wales!" the young barker was calling from outside the theater.

I bought a ticket and headed inside. Front row. Ten minutes into the first act, there she was. Dana, but not Dana. It was Cat. She'd gotten the little souvenir I'd picked up for her back on the submarine when I'd come upon the room of redheads.

She looked down for the barest of moments, and winked at me. The music began, and she started to sing.

I'm not one for cities, but somehow I kept finding myself in one.


End file.
